Restaurants 'in a panic mode right now'

Sen. Duckworth pledges to get more pandemic relief passed before end of year

The Grassroots Grill has closed for good in Chicago, along with the neighboring Mercury Theater. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

Restaurateurs pleaded for additional federal pandemic relief Friday in a “virtual town hall” with U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

“We can’t make it past the first of the year,” said Sam Sanchez, owner of multiple outlets of Moe’s Cantina and John Barleycorn in Chicago. “People are really in a panic mode right now.”

Fresh from a vote on a defense bill as Congress tries to finish off the lame-duck session before breaking for the year-end holidays, Sen. Tammy Duckworth pledged to get something done. “It’s been a devastating year, especially for the hospitality industry — and restaurants in particular,” Duckworth said. “I’m not leaving town until we get federal relief out the door.”

Duckworth is co-sponsor of the Restaurants Act in the Senate. Both she and senior Sen. Dick Durbin support it, along with a total of 49 senators. “It won’t take much to get it across the finish line,” she said. “It is so bipartisan and there is so much support.” She has specifically asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to attach it to either another COVID-19 relief package expected to pass before year’s end or the omnibus spending bill. “We’re so close to getting something out the door.”

The Restaurants Act would supply $120 billion in relief funding. But it might have to wait for President-elect Joe Biden to take office in January to get passed. In the meantime, Duckworth said Congress could replenish the Paycheck Protection Program providing aid for restaurants and their employees. She’s also pushed for automatic forgiveness for loans taken out in the PPP of $150,000 and less, in the thinking that it’s “likely going to be a small business” taking out a loan of that size, “so let’s go ahead” and streamline the forgiveness process.

Regardless, several prominent restaurateurs with the Illinois Restaurant Association made the case for some form of relief immediately before the end of the year on the Zoom session.

Calling it “a make-or-break moment,” IRA President Sam Toia said dozens of restaurants were closing for good each day — 110,000 total across the nation, with 2 million workers in the industry unemployed. “The outlook is very bleak as we enter the winter months,” he said. “We need a stimulus bill.”

With indoor dining banned in Illinois and outdoor dining increasingly unfeasible, Toia added, “There’s so much desperation out there. We can’t sustain another shutdown without federal relief. … Restaurants, bars, caterers, and everyone in between need a bailout.”

Toia was sympathetic to getting some relief now and a more ambition package under President-elect Biden, saying, “We just need something to get across the finish line before the end of the year. We can’t wait for the next administration.”

“The impact of what’s happening is more than real right now,” said Greg Schulson of Burrito Beach. “We can’t wait much longer.

“The layoffs are coming fast and furious,” with indoor dining shut down, he added. “The relief we need, we need it now. … Patience is running out” on the part of bankers and building owners collecting loan payments and rent. Without some immediate relief, “there’s going to be such devastation, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to recover.”

“People are going to lose their restaurant,” Sanchez added. “They’re also going to lose their home, because this is our job.”

“We can’t make it past the first of the year. … People are really in a panic mode right now.”

Sam Sanchez of Moe’s Cantina and John Barleycorn (Zoom)

“We’re running on empty now,” said Rick Bayless of Frontera restaurants, and it’s being felt by both owners and their employees. “This is the greatest demand for food and housing assistance since the Great Depression.

“I am just super worried that it’s going to be more than a decade for us to get back on our feet,” he added. “We’re all standing on the precipice looking over.”

Karen Conn of the IRA said restaurants across Illinois were trying to make it with delivery orders, “take and bake” prepared meals, and other innovative ways of trying to stay in business, but “there’s only going to be a small fraction of restaurants that are going to be able to survive doing this. It’s not going to cut it.

“There’s this sense that the entire hospitality industry has just collapsed,” she added. Pointing out that restaurants provide not only food but jobs and social gathering points to a town or city, Conn said, “Community life as we know it is going to suffer long-term effects.”

Duckworth agreed, calling restaurants the “glue” of communities. But she called McConnell’s persistent demand for COVID liability for businesses in the pandemic “a major sticking point.” Stating that she doesn’t support “blanket” liability, Duckworth pointed out that a restaurant that does all it can to prevent the disease only to see some customers catch it should be granted liability, but a meat-packing plant that forces workers who’ve tested positive to continue to come to work should not. “Those bad actors cannot have protection,” she said. “Gross negligence should have no protection.”

Duckworth said that Kentucky’s junior Sen. Rand Paul was also leading libertarian-leaning Republicans in opposing aid for singled-out industries — even though the aviation industry has received multiple bailouts. “Which makes no sense,” Duckworth insisted. “If we lose our airlines, we’re in trouble as a nation. Same with restaurants.

“Kentucky is key,” she added, pointing out that McConnell and Paul are “two major stumbling blocks” and both from the state across the Ohio River.

Duckworth promised to get something passed in the lame-duck session for the restaurant industry, while holding out hope for a more ambitious relief package to follow under the Biden administration, most likely including another round of $1,200 stimulus checks and a “massive infrastructure package,” as well as the Restaurants Act.